Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

This discussion drew a small crowd, apparently due to the holidays. Five people attended in person, and another submitted e-mail comments. Hogfather is the latest volume in the large (over 20 volumes) Discworld saga. In this book, Discworld’s equivalent of Santa Claus mysteriously disappears, and Death fills in for him.

All of us enjoyed the book. We considered it to be excellent light humorous reading, and the topic was appropriate for the holiday season. We liked Pratchett’s take on “Mary Poppins”-esque nannies. The insights into the cultural origins of the Hogfather and other similar entities such as the Tooth Fairy were

Noir by K. W. Jeter

Seven people attended this discussion, and another person submitted comments by e-mail. The book under consideration, Noir, is Jeter’s return to writing “serious SF” after several years writing books in Gene Roddenberry’s and Philip K. Dick’s universes. Noir is a hardboiled cyberpunk detective novel that recalls the edgier material Jeter wrote earlier in his career, including Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer. Since Jeter will be one of the Guests of Honor at the upcoming World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, we felt it was time we read one of his books.

We all found Jeter’s prose style to be strongly stylish. The first chapter is written in an elaborate stream-of-consciousness style that two of us liked and the rest barely muddled through. The rest of the book is written in a hardboiled